no, they're catering to a large segment of the population that consists of perfectly normal people who just happen to be ignorant about technology
They'd say "catering to", I'd say "exploiting", since the software looks like a piece of useless hobbled crap that no-one who knew better would touch with a bargepole, let alone pay for.
But if I build a house that isn't up to code, and it passes inspection, it's the inspector that looses his job when the house collapses.
True, but it is you who is buried under the pile.
No, it's the poor sod who lives in the house who gets buried (i.e. end user caught in the middle), which in the vast majority of cases *isn't* the builder.
It's more like [insert typical Slashdot flawed car analogy here];)
I should have phrased that "that will be reasonably practical by the time it's expected to see mainstream use".
I don't understand. What's not "practical" about VP7?
I assumed that you were making a point that VP7 may be theoretically better, whilst being impractical at present.
I have yet to ever find ANYONE here on/. with whom I can have a rational discussion about codec internals.
The general level of knowledge in "geek fields" on Slashdot is - outside of a few areas (e.g. general programming, MMORPGs, etc) - not as high as most people here would like to think. When you venture outside the computer-related fields, it drops much lower than you'd expect. Witness the fact that on most stories that require better-than-High-School, but not exceptional understanding of physics, that most of the comments are jokey. (I include myself in that not-as-knowledgable-as-they'd-like-to-think field, but at least I'm aware of it).
Never the less, the last line of my reply is "See the other reply to my earlier comment for details." which you apparently didn't do, or you'd have found a bit more detail.
I'm unclear which one you're referring to. I normally link stuff like that.
Anyway, I found your comment interesting, and I didn't intend to turn this into an argument. I just like to find out more when there are two differing viewpoints.
Re:It gives you something just as bad...
on
Review: Spore
·
· Score: 1
From what I understand, the console (Nintendo DS only I believe) is quite different from the PC/Mac version of Spore.
Yes, EA have done this before with the DS version of Sims 2, which appears to be quite a different game going under the same name as the "real" Sims 2.
Nothing wrong with them cutting down a game to fit the limitations of a console (up to a point), but if they genuinely can't manage it at all, or want to take a different approach (for possibly valid reasons) they shouldn't market it as if it were a conversion of the same game.
we may as well go for the most efficient, modern one.
So, you're advocating the use of On2's VP7 video codec for DVB2?
I should have phrased that "that will be reasonably practical by the time it's expected to see mainstream use".
As I've said repeatedly, even ignoring all else but quality at a given bitrate, H.264/AVC isn't necessarily ANY better than MPEG-2 in this (HDTV) usage case.
And as *I* pointed out- while conceding that the point was open to debate- someone else disagreed with you. If they're wrong fine, but I'd rather you pointed out what or why you still disagreed with them rather than disragarding it.
As far as sound quality, DAB is very good, actually. The MPEG-1 Layer II audio codec does exceptionally well at high bitrates (192kbps or above is easily CD quality).
Some people would dispute that, but I'll agree that it's near enough. Even the notorious 128mbps ones that snobs loathe and even I can tell are bad have as much to do with encoding (and transcoding?), as I've done plenty 128mbps transfers myself with a decent encoder that are pretty good.
The big (sound quality) problem is, DAB isn't being used as it was designed.
Yeah, but it should have been clear that it just wouldn't have been practical to have everyone switch over all their equipment (and hence transmissions) all at once.
Even now, years after it came out, DAB radios still aren't available at the low end of the market, and they're still much more bulky and power hungry than FM/AM models. It'll take time (and a virtuous circle) to address both points.
So whether DAB is in theory a good system doesn't necessarily apply to real life.
Your other points may be valid (and you sound like you know more about this than me), but I suspect that they're still open to *some* debate.:)
Digital transmissions (in highdef, no less) in the US have been going on longer than DVB-T transmissions in the UK and most everywhere else in the world.
Yes, but have they been widely-*used* enough (for digital terrestrial) to justify sticking with the older standard?
ATSC is also an even OLDER standard than DVB-T by at more than couple years
Yes, but the issue was when both saw mainstream usage on digital terrestrial TV.
Indeed. You get to waste twice the bandwidth, having one lowdef channel, and one highdef. And everyone needs to buy a second box if they want to get the latter. ATSC isn't sounding so bad after all.
You missed the point; I was comparing the US situation with the proposed DVB-T2 standard. I certainly wasn't suggesting that having two sets of transmissions is desirable- it's not. I'd much rather have one set... but using the most efficient, modern standard!
It's unfortunate that the current UK digiboxes won't support hi-def transmissions at all. But that can't be changed, whatever happens. So if we're having hi-def transmissions and there's no way of retaining compatibility anyway, we may as well go for the most efficient, modern one.
And I assumed that the US situation was that your *terrestrial* digital transmissions started more recently, so that you didn't have the issue of retaining compatibility with a 1990s system. Perhaps I misunderstood this, but ATSC certainly sounds more modern than the original DVB-T. And it's certainly more desirable to only require a single set of transmissions... but I still think that MPEG-2 sounds a bit old-fashioned.
Whether H.264 is better for hi-def TV is, as the other reply to your comment suggests, open to debate. However, even if H.264 were a no-brainer choice when tools and devices improve (and I appreciate that *right at this minute* MPEG-2 is much easier at present, but I was trying to keep one eye to the future, as all such decisions should), I appreciate that these decisions were probably taken a few years ago when H.264 was probably brand new, fairly unproven and demanded too much power relative to the chips/computers available then. And I suppose that it's easy for me to say that these people five or ten years in our past should have been thinking about five years into *our* future.
That's the problem with technology- it moves so fast, and you have to aim for where a fast-moving target *will* be, not where it is right now. But that takes a lot of skill and nerve.
Problem is that if you're too conservative, you end up with something like the DAB digital radio standard in the UK which, even though it's been hyped as the future of radio, is generally agreed to be based on already-dated technology, with sub-FM sound quality at the compression levels most stations use. The rest of Europe is threatening to move to DAB-2 and make it a red herring.
When the US DTV transition was planned, there was no H.264...
Fair enough; although that suggests that it's been in the works for rather a long time(!) (
The truth is that a $20,000 broadcast HD MPEG-2 encoder does a pretty good job at 18 Mbps. Real-time H.264 HD encoders that could do the same thing have only been in serious commercial production for a year (I've seen them try and fail for years, but now we seem to have enough CPU to make them operate stable and well).
Yes, but what will the situation in two or three years be? It seems shortsighted to make decisions which are meant to be reasonably long-term on the basis of the situation right now.
It is my impression that most DVB-T systems like UK Freeview also use MPEG-2.
As far as I know, the original DVB-T *is* an MPEG-2 based standard:)
The use of TV as a warning mechanism for evacuations / seeking shelter. If you turn that off fro those still on analog you've added to the complexity of an evacuation.
Well, let's see- they're switching off the analogue signal tomorrow, just before the storm's due to hit the area.
Joe Sixpack turns on his TV, sees he's getting no signal and figures that a storm's blown down his antenna- then gets the hell out of the place. Bingo, everyone's safe!:)
If you want to blame the FCC for something, blame them for selecting ATSC. Why on earth they chose MPEG2 when everyone else gets MPEG4 or H.264 is anyone's guess
Who's "everyone else"? Other countries? The current UK digital terrestrial TV system, DVB-T, uses MPEG2.
Though I should make clear that DVB-T is only used for standard res transmissions (*) and has been in proper use here since the late 1990s, so it at least has a good excuse for being based on 1990s tech(!). Even though we're only just *now* starting to switch off analogue in favour of this already dated system!
Also, unlike the US where (AFAIK) you're going straight to a single terrestrial digital standard that supports hi-res transmissions which can still be shown by standard-res boxes (albeit at reduced resolution), the UK/European DVB-T boxes won't handle hi-res. So we're getting another new standard for that which probably *will* use the more modern and efficient H.264.
And to be honest, I'd have thought MPEG-2 would be horribly bandwidth-hungry for hi-def and a pointless choice given that more advanced codecs are now available and the existing boxes wouldn't support it either way (even if the original MPEG-2 DVB-T standard would have).
Anyway, are your FCC/ATSC *really* using MPEG-2 for hi-def? If that's true, it makes no sense at all.
"American" companies like Nike and Levi's don't actually do anything except decide which Chinese products to buy, then import and market them
Like Nike or not, I'm pretty sure that they still design their own trainers to their own specifications before they have them built.
Dell are in a different boat because computers aren't trainers and (as others have already mentioned) they could end up being pushed into designing their desktops and (especially) laptops to suit the way their contractor's factory works- especially if the contractor is a major one and Dell increasingly becomes a smaller part of the market.
It's just like with printers and ink or razors and blades.
What's the deal with the razors and blades cliche? Nowadays they typically sell the handles with a couple of blades for UK £4-6 (around US $7-11 inc. VAT/sales tax).
That's not a major ripoff, but it's not especially cheap either. I mean, the "razor" (i.e. the handle!) is just a piece of metal with some rubber grips and a plastic blade attachment. They can't cost that much to make. If they weren't generally one-off purchases, I'm sure they could make pretty decent money by selling these kits alone.
My eight year old wants a laptop. I've seriously thought about getting something like this for her. Now she mainly place flash web games or watches you tube. So I'm not interested in a cheap laptop that doesn't do those two things.
Eight years old? EIGHT YEARS OLD and she wants a lah-di-dah laptop? Pah! People tell me that "kids are so sophisticated these days", but too bad. Tell her
she's getting one of these, and tell her she can like it or lump it! Speak and Spell were good enough when I were a lad (*), so that's practically luxury:)
If she whines and you want to be really horrible- or just silly- get her this one and before you show it to her tell her you're not *quite* sure if it runs Flash.
(*) Strictly speaking, this isn't true. I didn't have a bloody Speak and Spell when I grew up... and that *is* true:'-( Though I realise now that if I had I would have been bored of it within the first day and only used it out of guilt:/
I will have you know that TV programming in Japan is quite different than anything you will find in the US, since I think that they give all the people who come up with the shows drugs for inspiration.
I was going to say they do that with US TV too. Except in that case the drug is cocaine and the only thing it inspires is crap TV as a means to get more money to get more cocaine...
In the past, the reiserFS team didn't themselves consider that ReiserFS was a production tool. They made a poorly documented incompatible internal format change. [rest cut- see parent, it's interesting enough to read in full and should be modded up anyway]
What you were saying sounds appalling. However, when did this take place? Was it in the early days when it was still in beta (formal or de facto)?
If so, people probably shouldn't have been using it for important stuff. But then, the kind of people testing stuff out (and the fact it was being tested in itself) makes the "I'll automatically upgrade your filesystem even if you asked me not to touch it" attitude less appropriate.
And if they did this on a "final" version? *speechless*
Anyway, for more tips on "how to hold down a well-paid corporate job whilst battering your brain with Class A drugs once a month
Yeah, apparently a relatively high proportion of GPs are smackheads, but manage to get away with it because they have access to a clean and reliable supply of heroin.
reply to this post. Junkie Hacker is waiting for your call!
Yeah, go on then. Though I'm willing to be that it's probably not as much fun as a real life "Matrix meets Trainspotting" fantasy which- to be fair- you don't seem to be hyping it up as anyway, but could have...
COMMUNIST country? Damn, what kind of silly question is that? Seriously, where have you been hiding the last 60 years or so?
China isn't a communist country in anything but name and hasn't been for a long time. Where have *you* been hiding the last 20 years?
China is- in many respects- less socialist, let alone communist, than the United States in areas such as education and healthcare. A far more accurate description would be (as someone else said) "the world's first mature fascist economy".
That's fascism as in blending the interests of the state and commerce to serve each other, exploiting nationalism, etc. etc.
Granted, the reins are loosening
And the Soviet Union is showing signs of opening up. Uh, the reins started "loosening" in the financial sense during the 1980s, they are long gone.
China will be about as communist as my cat
China is already about as communist as your cat. (Unless your cat's name is "Chairman Miaow", ho ho ho!)
but do we really need dipshit questions like this on/.?
It's only a "dipshit" question if you're enough of a dipshit to believe that China is still communist. Either because you're living in the past, because you're ignorant, or because you engage in the usual kneejerk reaction that communism and dictatorship are synonymous and that capitalism always implies freedom. China isn't remotely free, but it sure as hell isn't communist either.
Personally, I'm happy to believe that (as othershave suggested) this has as much to do with the large Chinese telcos' control of the market as anything.
Parent modded flamebait? Is this intentional troll-modding, or does someone just not like what he/she has to say? I found it very interesting, personally.
Compared to some other languages, Java is pretty limited in what abstractions can be practically implemented, so it greatly restricts the amount of solutions available to the programmer.
I'm not sure that this was unintentional. From my very limited exposure to C++ (admittedly about 5 year ago), it seems that it gives you the flexibility to do a whole load of things that seem very clever and desirable at first. However, it also seemed that if implemented wrongly, or if the (often subtle) implications of using such power were not fully understood, then it could hide exceptionally subtle and nasty problems within apparently straightforward code. IIRC, this applied particularly to operator and type behaviour.
When I considered the implications of all those C++ facilities, I understood *exactly* why Bjarne Stroustrup had said "C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off."
Now, you could argue that it's nice to have that power if you want it, and use it sparingly. But my guess is that in the real world, where it only takes one slightly inexperienced programmer's flawed overcleverness to cause nightmares for everyone relying on that code- whether they realise it or not- the ability to do intellectually clever things just isn't worth the major risks involved.
Even worse, from what I remember is that it's possible to write C++ code that claims that (e.g.) your variables won't be modified, but doesn't always enforce such guarantees.
That's very cheap- in plenty of countries/cities there's no way in hell you'd get an apartment for anything like that.
Having a spare 3500 to pay 10 months in advance is hardly a big deal.
Really? Not everyone is in the position where they have that much money saved up beforehand. Not everyone lives in a city where they can get a passable apartment for 350 euro a month.
And even if they did have that money saved up as a "safety buffer", most people would not consider it acceptable that this buffer was gone just because some landlord had fucked up. I mean, seriously, you'd be quite happy if this happened to you?
And I do NOT consider myself to be especially well off - I would consider that "most people" are probably in a similar situation.
I would say that you're assuming too much- in particular that everyone is like you.
Anyone who does NOT have enough disposable income to afford 10 months rent in advance really needs to find somewhere cheaper to live.
So suppose someone's been looking for a job for some time, their savings have gone down quite a bit, and they finally get one in- say- London, where rent is hideously expensive. They should go live miles away, even if it means that they can't take the job, because they don't happen to have ten months rent (at London rates) in the bank? Yeah, that makes sense.
Hmmm... I am in no way interested in buying a crappy little apartment in downtown Hannover.
Which I take to mean that you're living in one? So given the choice, you'd rather pay rent on one- money down the drain- than own it, and then sell it later on?
No, I did not miss the point - I simply do not accept that "most people" can not afford 10 months of rent.
Slashdot Mirror
no, they're catering to a large segment of the population that consists of perfectly normal people who just happen to be ignorant about technology
They'd say "catering to", I'd say "exploiting", since the software looks like a piece of useless hobbled crap that no-one who knew better would touch with a bargepole, let alone pay for.
But if I build a house that isn't up to code, and it passes inspection, it's the inspector that looses his job when the house collapses.
True, but it is you who is buried under the pile.
No, it's the poor sod who lives in the house who gets buried (i.e. end user caught in the middle), which in the vast majority of cases *isn't* the builder.
;)
It's more like [insert typical Slashdot flawed car analogy here]
Absolutley correct: being a bitch is not a legal criteron. However, it's a key criterion in forming my opinion of whether or not she is a bitch.
No it's not, that's circular reasoning. :)
I should have phrased that "that will be reasonably practical by the time it's expected to see mainstream use".
I don't understand. What's not "practical" about VP7?
I assumed that you were making a point that VP7 may be theoretically better, whilst being impractical at present.
I have yet to ever find ANYONE here on /. with whom I can have a rational discussion about codec internals.
The general level of knowledge in "geek fields" on Slashdot is - outside of a few areas (e.g. general programming, MMORPGs, etc) - not as high as most people here would like to think. When you venture outside the computer-related fields, it drops much lower than you'd expect. Witness the fact that on most stories that require better-than-High-School, but not exceptional understanding of physics, that most of the comments are jokey. (I include myself in that not-as-knowledgable-as-they'd-like-to-think field, but at least I'm aware of it).
Never the less, the last line of my reply is "See the other reply to my earlier comment for details." which you apparently didn't do, or you'd have found a bit more detail.
I'm unclear which one you're referring to. I normally link stuff like that.
Anyway, I found your comment interesting, and I didn't intend to turn this into an argument. I just like to find out more when there are two differing viewpoints.
From what I understand, the console (Nintendo DS only I believe) is quite different from the PC/Mac version of Spore.
Yes, EA have done this before with the DS version of Sims 2, which appears to be quite a different game going under the same name as the "real" Sims 2.
Nothing wrong with them cutting down a game to fit the limitations of a console (up to a point), but if they genuinely can't manage it at all, or want to take a different approach (for possibly valid reasons) they shouldn't market it as if it were a conversion of the same game.
we may as well go for the most efficient, modern one.
So, you're advocating the use of On2's VP7 video codec for DVB2?
I should have phrased that "that will be reasonably practical by the time it's expected to see mainstream use".
As I've said repeatedly, even ignoring all else but quality at a given bitrate, H.264/AVC isn't necessarily ANY better than MPEG-2 in this (HDTV) usage case.
And as *I* pointed out- while conceding that the point was open to debate- someone else disagreed with you. If they're wrong fine, but I'd rather you pointed out what or why you still disagreed with them rather than disragarding it.
As far as sound quality, DAB is very good, actually. The MPEG-1 Layer II audio codec does exceptionally well at high bitrates (192kbps or above is easily CD quality).
Some people would dispute that, but I'll agree that it's near enough. Even the notorious 128mbps ones that snobs loathe and even I can tell are bad have as much to do with encoding (and transcoding?), as I've done plenty 128mbps transfers myself with a decent encoder that are pretty good.
The big (sound quality) problem is, DAB isn't being used as it was designed.
Yeah, but it should have been clear that it just wouldn't have been practical to have everyone switch over all their equipment (and hence transmissions) all at once.
:)
Even now, years after it came out, DAB radios still aren't available at the low end of the market, and they're still much more bulky and power hungry than FM/AM models. It'll take time (and a virtuous circle) to address both points.
So whether DAB is in theory a good system doesn't necessarily apply to real life.
Your other points may be valid (and you sound like you know more about this than me), but I suspect that they're still open to *some* debate.
But you couldn't just swipe someone's butt
Uh, is that like an ass-swipe? Huh huh huh....
Digital transmissions (in highdef, no less) in the US have been going on longer than DVB-T transmissions in the UK and most everywhere else in the world.
Yes, but have they been widely-*used* enough (for digital terrestrial) to justify sticking with the older standard?
ATSC is also an even OLDER standard than DVB-T by at more than couple years
Yes, but the issue was when both saw mainstream usage on digital terrestrial TV.
Indeed. You get to waste twice the bandwidth, having one lowdef channel, and one highdef. And everyone needs to buy a second box if they want to get the latter. ATSC isn't sounding so bad after all.
You missed the point; I was comparing the US situation with the proposed DVB-T2 standard. I certainly wasn't suggesting that having two sets of transmissions is desirable- it's not. I'd much rather have one set... but using the most efficient, modern standard!
It's unfortunate that the current UK digiboxes won't support hi-def transmissions at all. But that can't be changed, whatever happens. So if we're having hi-def transmissions and there's no way of retaining compatibility anyway, we may as well go for the most efficient, modern one.
And I assumed that the US situation was that your *terrestrial* digital transmissions started more recently, so that you didn't have the issue of retaining compatibility with a 1990s system. Perhaps I misunderstood this, but ATSC certainly sounds more modern than the original DVB-T. And it's certainly more desirable to only require a single set of transmissions... but I still think that MPEG-2 sounds a bit old-fashioned.
Whether H.264 is better for hi-def TV is, as the other reply to your comment suggests, open to debate. However, even if H.264 were a no-brainer choice when tools and devices improve (and I appreciate that *right at this minute* MPEG-2 is much easier at present, but I was trying to keep one eye to the future, as all such decisions should), I appreciate that these decisions were probably taken a few years ago when H.264 was probably brand new, fairly unproven and demanded too much power relative to the chips/computers available then. And I suppose that it's easy for me to say that these people five or ten years in our past should have been thinking about five years into *our* future.
That's the problem with technology- it moves so fast, and you have to aim for where a fast-moving target *will* be, not where it is right now. But that takes a lot of skill and nerve.
Problem is that if you're too conservative, you end up with something like the DAB digital radio standard in the UK which, even though it's been hyped as the future of radio, is generally agreed to be based on already-dated technology, with sub-FM sound quality at the compression levels most stations use. The rest of Europe is threatening to move to DAB-2 and make it a red herring.
When the US DTV transition was planned, there was no H.264...
Fair enough; although that suggests that it's been in the works for rather a long time(!) (
The truth is that a $20,000 broadcast HD MPEG-2 encoder does a pretty good job at 18 Mbps. Real-time H.264 HD encoders that could do the same thing have only been in serious commercial production for a year (I've seen them try and fail for years, but now we seem to have enough CPU to make them operate stable and well).
Yes, but what will the situation in two or three years be? It seems shortsighted to make decisions which are meant to be reasonably long-term on the basis of the situation right now.
It is my impression that most DVB-T systems like UK Freeview also use MPEG-2.
As far as I know, the original DVB-T *is* an MPEG-2 based standard :)
The use of TV as a warning mechanism for evacuations / seeking shelter. If you turn that off fro those still on analog you've added to the complexity of an evacuation.
Well, let's see- they're switching off the analogue signal tomorrow, just before the storm's due to hit the area.
:)
Joe Sixpack turns on his TV, sees he's getting no signal and figures that a storm's blown down his antenna- then gets the hell out of the place. Bingo, everyone's safe!
If you want to blame the FCC for something, blame them for selecting ATSC. Why on earth they chose MPEG2 when everyone else gets MPEG4 or H.264 is anyone's guess
Who's "everyone else"? Other countries? The current UK digital terrestrial TV system, DVB-T, uses MPEG2.
Though I should make clear that DVB-T is only used for standard res transmissions (*) and has been in proper use here since the late 1990s, so it at least has a good excuse for being based on 1990s tech(!). Even though we're only just *now* starting to switch off analogue in favour of this already dated system!
Also, unlike the US where (AFAIK) you're going straight to a single terrestrial digital standard that supports hi-res transmissions which can still be shown by standard-res boxes (albeit at reduced resolution), the UK/European DVB-T boxes won't handle hi-res. So we're getting another new standard for that which probably *will* use the more modern and efficient H.264.
And to be honest, I'd have thought MPEG-2 would be horribly bandwidth-hungry for hi-def and a pointless choice given that more advanced codecs are now available and the existing boxes wouldn't support it either way (even if the original MPEG-2 DVB-T standard would have).
Anyway, are your FCC/ATSC *really* using MPEG-2 for hi-def? If that's true, it makes no sense at all.
"American" companies like Nike and Levi's don't actually do anything except decide which Chinese products to buy, then import and market them
Like Nike or not, I'm pretty sure that they still design their own trainers to their own specifications before they have them built.
Dell are in a different boat because computers aren't trainers and (as others have already mentioned) they could end up being pushed into designing their desktops and (especially) laptops to suit the way their contractor's factory works- especially if the contractor is a major one and Dell increasingly becomes a smaller part of the market.
In b4 fanboi console war shitstorm...
How tragic- your vision of the impending and inevitable flamewar ignored and modded down by disbelievers, just like a latterday Cassandra.
:)
Mmmmm..... nah, on second thoughts you're just stating the bleeding obvious
It's just like with printers and ink or razors and blades.
What's the deal with the razors and blades cliche? Nowadays they typically sell the handles with a couple of blades for UK £4-6 (around US $7-11 inc. VAT/sales tax).
That's not a major ripoff, but it's not especially cheap either. I mean, the "razor" (i.e. the handle!) is just a piece of metal with some rubber grips and a plastic blade attachment. They can't cost that much to make. If they weren't generally one-off purchases, I'm sure they could make pretty decent money by selling these kits alone.
My eight year old wants a laptop. I've seriously thought about getting something like this for her. Now she mainly place flash web games or watches you tube. So I'm not interested in a cheap laptop that doesn't do those two things.
Eight years old? EIGHT YEARS OLD and she wants a lah-di-dah laptop? Pah! People tell me that "kids are so sophisticated these days", but too bad. Tell her she's getting one of these, and tell her she can like it or lump it! Speak and Spell were good enough when I were a lad (*), so that's practically luxury :)
:'-( Though I realise now that if I had I would have been bored of it within the first day and only used it out of guilt :/
If she whines and you want to be really horrible- or just silly- get her this one and before you show it to her tell her you're not *quite* sure if it runs Flash.
(*) Strictly speaking, this isn't true. I didn't have a bloody Speak and Spell when I grew up... and that *is* true
I will have you know that TV programming in Japan is quite different than anything you will find in the US, since I think that they give all the people who come up with the shows drugs for inspiration.
I was going to say they do that with US TV too. Except in that case the drug is cocaine and the only thing it inspires is crap TV as a means to get more money to get more cocaine...
I had to completely wipe out everything on the raid and start over. I no longer run lvm - I used to swear by it
Lemme guess.... after this incident you were swearing *at* it instead?
In the past, the reiserFS team didn't themselves consider that ReiserFS was a production tool. They made a poorly documented incompatible internal format change. [rest cut- see parent, it's interesting enough to read in full and should be modded up anyway]
What you were saying sounds appalling. However, when did this take place? Was it in the early days when it was still in beta (formal or de facto)?
If so, people probably shouldn't have been using it for important stuff. But then, the kind of people testing stuff out (and the fact it was being tested in itself) makes the "I'll automatically upgrade your filesystem even if you asked me not to touch it" attitude less appropriate.
And if they did this on a "final" version? *speechless*
Why are you posting an otherwise valid response to the original question as a reply to an offtopic FP (and openly acknowledging this)?
:-P
Is this because replying there means your comment will appear nearer the start than it would have otherwise? Busted!
Anyway, for more tips on "how to hold down a well-paid corporate job whilst battering your brain with Class A drugs once a month
Yeah, apparently a relatively high proportion of GPs are smackheads, but manage to get away with it because they have access to a clean and reliable supply of heroin.
reply to this post. Junkie Hacker is waiting for your call!
Yeah, go on then. Though I'm willing to be that it's probably not as much fun as a real life "Matrix meets Trainspotting" fantasy which- to be fair- you don't seem to be hyping it up as anyway, but could have...
COMMUNIST country? Damn, what kind of silly question is that? Seriously, where have you been hiding the last 60 years or so?
China isn't a communist country in anything but name and hasn't been for a long time. Where have *you* been hiding the last 20 years?
China is- in many respects- less socialist, let alone communist, than the United States in areas such as education and healthcare. A far more accurate description would be (as someone else said) "the world's first mature fascist economy".
That's fascism as in blending the interests of the state and commerce to serve each other, exploiting nationalism, etc. etc.
Granted, the reins are loosening
And the Soviet Union is showing signs of opening up. Uh, the reins started "loosening" in the financial sense during the 1980s, they are long gone.
China will be about as communist as my cat
China is already about as communist as your cat. (Unless your cat's name is "Chairman Miaow", ho ho ho!)
but do we really need dipshit questions like this on /.?
It's only a "dipshit" question if you're enough of a dipshit to believe that China is still communist. Either because you're living in the past, because you're ignorant, or because you engage in the usual kneejerk reaction that communism and dictatorship are synonymous and that capitalism always implies freedom. China isn't remotely free, but it sure as hell isn't communist either.
Personally, I'm happy to believe that (as others have suggested) this has as much to do with the large Chinese telcos' control of the market as anything.
Parent modded flamebait? Is this intentional troll-modding, or does someone just not like what he/she has to say? I found it very interesting, personally.
Compared to some other languages, Java is pretty limited in what abstractions can be practically implemented, so it greatly restricts the amount of solutions available to the programmer.
I'm not sure that this was unintentional. From my very limited exposure to C++ (admittedly about 5 year ago), it seems that it gives you the flexibility to do a whole load of things that seem very clever and desirable at first. However, it also seemed that if implemented wrongly, or if the (often subtle) implications of using such power were not fully understood, then it could hide exceptionally subtle and nasty problems within apparently straightforward code. IIRC, this applied particularly to operator and type behaviour.
When I considered the implications of all those C++ facilities, I understood *exactly* why Bjarne Stroustrup had said "C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off."
Now, you could argue that it's nice to have that power if you want it, and use it sparingly. But my guess is that in the real world, where it only takes one slightly inexperienced programmer's flawed overcleverness to cause nightmares for everyone relying on that code- whether they realise it or not- the ability to do intellectually clever things just isn't worth the major risks involved.
Even worse, from what I remember is that it's possible to write C++ code that claims that (e.g.) your variables won't be modified, but doesn't always enforce such guarantees.
Here's a hurricane music video...
Here's another one! I doubt this band are popular in New Orleans...
I [..] pay 350 euro a month in rent.
That's very cheap- in plenty of countries/cities there's no way in hell you'd get an apartment for anything like that.
Having a spare 3500 to pay 10 months in advance is hardly a big deal.
Really? Not everyone is in the position where they have that much money saved up beforehand. Not everyone lives in a city where they can get a passable apartment for 350 euro a month.
And even if they did have that money saved up as a "safety buffer", most people would not consider it acceptable that this buffer was gone just because some landlord had fucked up. I mean, seriously, you'd be quite happy if this happened to you?
And I do NOT consider myself to be especially well off - I would consider that "most people" are probably in a similar situation.
I would say that you're assuming too much- in particular that everyone is like you.
Anyone who does NOT have enough disposable income to afford 10 months rent in advance really needs to find somewhere cheaper to live.
So suppose someone's been looking for a job for some time, their savings have gone down quite a bit, and they finally get one in- say- London, where rent is hideously expensive. They should go live miles away, even if it means that they can't take the job, because they don't happen to have ten months rent (at London rates) in the bank? Yeah, that makes sense.
Hmmm... I am in no way interested in buying a crappy little apartment in downtown Hannover.
Which I take to mean that you're living in one? So given the choice, you'd rather pay rent on one- money down the drain- than own it, and then sell it later on?
No, I did not miss the point - I simply do not accept that "most people" can not afford 10 months of rent.
Then you didn't think things through very well.